San Bernardino County school board advances ouster of Gil Navarro

The San Bernardino County school board voted 4-0 Monday to move forward with the legal process of removing board member Gil Navarro from office.

The vote follows a decision by the Attorney General's Office that determined there was enough evidence to allow the board to sue.That was based on Navarro being elected in November to the Board of Directors of the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District, a position the school board determined is incompatible with his other elected position. Navarro has been on the school board since 2006.

"There is substantial issue as to the incompatibility of the two offices Mr. Navarro currently holds, because we have found similar offices incompatible," Supervising Deputy Attorney General Susan Duncan Lee said in a June 11 letter that did not actually decide the offices were in fact incompatible.

Navarro did not take place in the vote or the discussion.

He said afterward, though, that he planned to fight the decision.

"I don't agree that four persons can decide whether I (can) be on the county Board of Education," Navarro said. "It's up to the voters in Area D (the portion of the county Navarro represents) to decide, and if they decide they don't want me there, it's up to them."

Navarro's seat, which covers schools in San Bernardino and Rialto, is next up for election in November 2014.

In a prepared statement, board President Bette Harrison said board members had felt a responsibility to get guidance from the attorney general.

"This is a legal matter that needs to be resolved and the proper channel is to go through the judicial process," Harrison said. "A clear resolution is in the best interest of all parties concerned."

The board's decision was to initiate a "quo warranto" proceeding, which involves the attorney general acting to remove "any person who usurps, intrudes into, or unlawfully holds or exercises any public office" in California.

That gives the district permission to sue, although Navarro says the school board's vote did not authorize a lawsuit.

In another case, the Attorney General's Office decided that an officer who sets water rates for a local agency can't simultaneously serve on a school board.

"A significant clash of duties and loyalties may ... arise in such matters as the Water District setting the wholesale water rate that will be passed on to the school district by the retail water agencies involved," the attorney general found in that case.